If you think that you know everything about the Indian Railways, you couldn’t have been more wrong. Indian Railways are considered to be the lifeline of the entire transportation network in the country. It is definitely a massive setup with several branches of the organization. It has a ministry dedicated to it with a well-defined budget. Thousands of passengers make use of the Indian Railways daily for travel.

However, a large portion of the country’s population is not much aware of the trains and associated facts. In this post, we are going to discuss some of the interesting facts that people don’t know about Indian Railways.

Fact #1:

Indian Railways is known to be the largest network of railways that is taken care of by a single government and is counted to be the third largest in the world with a length of approximately 127,760 kilometres. The annual tally comes to about 9991 trains carrying 8421 million passengers approximately. The daily passengers’ count is way higher than any other country.

Fact #2:

Indian Railways used to own the longest railway platform, i.e. Kharagpur, in the world. This record has been broken recently by the Gorakhpur station. The length accounts to be about 4,430 feet.

Fact #3:

The UNESCO’ site list of World Heritage consists of two important railway elements, namely the Indian Mountain Railways and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. The former has three railways called Kalka Shimla Railway, Nilgiri Mountain Railways, and Darjeeling Himalayan Railways. All of them have been reported to be functional for 100 years. The latter is known for its classic fusion of Indian architecture and Gothic art.

Fact #4:

The Indian Railways consists of five luxury trains. The names of these trains are:

The Deccan Odyssey

The Maharajas’ Express

The Golden Chariot

Palace on Wheels

Royal Rajasthan on Wheels

These luxury trains are considered to be the pride of Indian railways. They also hold a significant position among all the luxury trains across the globe. Palace on Wheels is known to be the oldest of all.

Fact #5:

Train times can vary largely depending on the distance and speed. The fastest train of the Indian Railways is considered to be the New Delhi-Bhopal Shatabdi Express. It moves with a speed of 91 kmph and can also go up to a speed of 150 kmph. On the other hand, Nilgiri Express is known for being the slowest of all rains in the Indian Railways. The average speed of this train about 10 kmph.

Fact #6:

There are several tunnel tracks that fall under the Indian Railways. The longest among them would be the one called Pir Panjal tunnel. Its length goes up to 11.215 kilometres. The construction of this track was done in 2012.

Fact #7:

The longest distance run in the Indian Railways is the Vivek Express that connects Kanyakumari and Dibrugarh. The distance it covers is about 4273 kilometres. On the other hand, the shortest distance is of 3 kilometres run between Ajni and Nagpur.

Hope these facts helped you gain some insight into the most iconic travelling system of our country, the Indian Railways.